


If at First You Don't Succeed

by fateisnotafactor



Category: Taskmaster (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fateisnotafactor/pseuds/fateisnotafactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh packs a suitcase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If at First You Don't Succeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subito/gifts).



“Pack the suitcase with as many of the items from the wardrobe as you can. The suitcase must be closed and fastened shut, and you may not damage or destroy any of the items in order to fit them. Your time starts now.”

 

Josh slowly lowered the message and considered the suitcase. It was fairly large, soft-sided, and a dark puce colour. In the middle of the bare room it looked strangely sinister. But this couldn't be that hard, right? Just packing a suitcase. That was something he actually did in his everyday life.

The contents of the wardrobe, however, were less everyday-life.

"What the fuck," said Josh. "Oh, I'm moving, surely I can just pack my whole house into one small suitcase?" There was furniture in there. Specifically a lamp and a chair, both of which had very different dimensions than the suitcase. There were coats and shirts and shoes and all that, sure, plus some toiletries, and a large speaker, and there was also a sword. That was definitely a sword.

Well, obviously they weren’t going to make this reasonable. It wouldn’t be as interesting to watch if no one had a breakdown. 

He started with medium-sized items. He would've started with the big ones, only he hadn't yet figured out a way to get the chair in at all. The lamp could probably be disassembled. 

"Disassembly isn't breaking, right?" asked Josh. "Can I have a screwdriver?" Someone was definitely going to disassemble the chair. Someone was probably going to full-on break it, maybe also him, after they’d given up on life.

Forty minutes later, Josh had packed most of the clothes and all the toiletries except a shampoo bottle the size of his head, and he’d broken the lamp. He’d decided to get a better idea of the volume of the remaining items - to prove to viewers just how impossible this task was - by packing them together in a tall and narrow tower. 

"Josh, have you given up?" Alex asked.

"No," said Josh. "This is my best effort. I'm finished. Now I’m making a point."

"So you're saying I should have stopped the clock several minutes ago."

"Well, yes."

"Ah," said Alex. They could watch their footage to figure out exactly when Josh had abandoned the project.

They eyed the pile. It teetered and started to fall. Josh remembered, too late, that the wardrobe hadn’t been too sturdy either.

 

 

*

Josh’s alarm sounded wrong, because it didn't usually play Jingle Bells. He fumbled on the nightstand for it and realised it was actually a call, although those didn't usually play Jingle Bells either.

It was a reminder about the Taskmaster thing later today. 

"Right," said Josh. "You know, that's funny, I was just having a dream about that, and I probably still would've forgotten."

 

Dark clouds had rolled in overhead when he arrived at the house. It gave him a strange sense of deja vu. There was something strange about this house in general, wasn't there? Like, even aside from the taskmaster portrait. 

Josh entered. The envelope was on the table in the hall, just the way he was expecting it. The way, in fact, that it had been in the dream he'd had last night.

"...Pack all the items..." he murmured. "May not damage or destroy..." He stopped and stared at the message. It was quite the same as it had been in the dream.

"What," said Josh. "This can't be right."

"Oh, it can be, Josh," said Alex.

"But..." He marched into the room and flung open the door of the wardrobe.

Everything was very familiar. Same deer head, same stupid chair. He wasn't going to make a crazy tower out of them.

He started with the lamp and it didn’t break, so that was one to real Josh and zero for dream Josh. He thought he might be able to get the speaker in with the lamp pieces around the side, but it didn’t work at all like he planned. He pulled the speaker back out and wondered if anything he’d done to it counted as damage, officially.

“Would you like some mood music for the rest of your task?" asked Alex.

“Yeah,” said Josh. Why not. “Can I have a CD player or something, too?" He untwisted the rest of the cord and plugged in into the socket.

"Hey--" Alex started.

 

*

Josh's phone was playing O Christmas Tree.

"Oh," he said. "So this is how this is. I know this. Like the movie."

"What?" said his friend Jack, on the other end of the phone.

"I think I might be in a time loop," said Josh. “Are you calling to remind me about the Taskmaster thing?”

“Uh, no,” said Jack. “I’ll talk to you later?”

 

Josh eyed the portrait when he entered the house. "I think you have something to do with this," he said. The portrait remained stubbornly inanimate.

The lamp also proved stubborn, losing a tiny screw that rolled away and fell into a crack between the floor and wall. Alex shook his head sadly.

"That is not damage," said Josh.

"That is not disassembly either," said Alex.

 

It was a little bit surprising for the split second he saw the sword coming, but in retrospect not very.

 

*

“You know, I really resent this,” Josh told Alex, who hadn’t said a word about his method of chair disassembly but was looking a certain way. “I’m going to die doing this, somehow, I’m sure.”

“There is nothing in here that can kill you,” said Alex.

“Wrong. There’s the sword, for starters.”

“It isn’t sharp.”

“Sharp enough,” said Josh, which should’ve given Alex pause but didn’t.

 

*

Josh woke up to a Christmas carol, went to the house, and managed to end his life packing a suitcase.

“I guess I can’t be actually dying,” he told Jack, who called again on the seventh day. “Because I’m still alive, right? Unless this is a really fucked up version of the afterlife, do you think? Do I have to successfully pack this suitcase to get to heaven, or something?”

“I can’t help you there,” said Jack.

 

*

The next time Alex gave him a look about the chair, Josh considered running him through with the sword. But he didn’t have a plan in place for if it actually stuck this time. He wasn’t sure it was even Alex’s fault.

“Do you have magical powers, by any chance?” Josh asked him.

“Only the Taskmaster is privy to that information,” said Alex.

 

*

Josh was getting better at packing the suitcase. It wouldn’t have seemed possible at first, so maybe this was all a nice lesson in persistence, and practice makes perfect. However, the task was still not possible.

“Fuck it,” said Josh, and piled everything in anyway. This left a gap of about three feet between the top half of the suitcase and the bottom half.

He found a roll of tape in the kitchen. Under the censorious gaze of Alex, he wrapped the entire roll’s worth around the suitcase, then went back to look for some more.

“You haven’t locked it,” Alex pointed out. Josh’s gaze fell to the tiny padlock that dangled from one end of the zipper. He sighed, and started making a loop of tape.

“You’re locking the tape,” said Alex. 

“Yes,” said Josh. “Yes! What more do you want from me?!”

Alex looked mildly startled. Josh supposed it was at least possible that he didn’t remember any of their previous times together on this task, although he found it unlikely.

“There,” said Josh. “I’m done. That’s—47 minutes?”

“46,” said Alex.

They looked at each other. Josh waited, a little bit, for something to happen. Maybe overpacked suitcases could explode and kill you. But it didn’t.

 

*

Josh woke up, after an evening filled with things other than suitcase-packing, to the sound of his phone playing Deck the Halls.

“Great effort, Josh,” said Greg Davies’ voice. “ _You_ figured the chair out.”

“What—did you—”

“Didn’t take you too many tries, either. More than I can say for _some_ people.”

“What—”

Greg hung up.

Josh thought for a moment, and decided to try ringing Roisin first.

 

 

 


End file.
